The Children of Abraham
by StarkInItsMarvel
Summary: Join Captain America and the Red Skull during the years of WW2... see Paris destroyed, romance blossom, see the disillusion that comes with victory...
1. Chapter 1

**THE CHILDREN OF ABRAHAM**

_"There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them."- _Genesis 6:4

Buenos Aires, Argentina 1955

The Palacio Duhau had seen better days. The building's beautiful exterior was plastered over with anti-Peronist posters, decrying the hotel itself as one of that dictator's luxuries. The only guests were uneasy foreigners- diplomats, businessmen, expatriate artists... and Captain America.

Steve Rogers sipped his Roosevelt martini without much of a worry about being recognized. Suit-and-tie types were usually the last to recognize him, and the last to make a point of it if they did. No, it was usually the sauced-up guy in a Knicks shirt eating a vendor hot dog who called attention to him while he was out on the street. And there wasn't a Knicks shirt in sight.

The anti-Peronists who made everyone in the hotel a bit uneasy weren't much more helpful to SHIELD than the Peronists before them and the caudillos before them. They still hid Nazis and Fascists and even some AIM operatives. But during the coup, someone had finally leaked the location of an individual very important to Rogers and SHIELD- Abraham Erskine, the head of Operation Rebirth and a traitor to the United States.

So here he was, sipping Roosevelt martinis and waiting for a good lead. Erskine had some friends in high places here in Argentina, and some of them were sitting in this very bar. One of them was supposed to be meeting him. Rogers certainly wasn't here for the martinis. Alcohol didn't do anything for him and the taste wasn't quite up to snuff. Some things just had to be made in America.

_From the Journals of Abraham Erskine_

December 25, 1940

Subject B05 is inspiring in a manner. I was restrained from telling these men the risks, or their true purpose. They believe they are testing a new vaccine.

I went to visit them in their quarters, for the purposes of the experiment. The ones who can remain conscious know they are the last handful of survivors. They know it and the thought lingers like some pale shadow over the room. Subject B05 is different. B05 talked to me for a while, in his feverish state. He is... what is the American phrase? Soldiering on. He talked, about happy things, in a calm tone despite the torture his body must be going through. If anyone deserves to survive Operation Rebirth it is him.

I think he is developing brain lesions. I noticed a number of tics that didn't seem connected to his shivering from fever.

Marienburg Castle, Danzig1939

Who would have thought that a lowly Bavarian like Johann Schmidt would someday walk the halls of a grand castle such as this? And not as some slack-jawed sightseer or groundskeeper, but as a lord and master?

He looked out in the Nogat River and breathed in the fresh scent of the air. The woods of northern Europe, carried across the cold Baltic Sea. He imagined just what adventure lay ahead of him... what rich rewards lay under the flag of Germany. And he tried to glimpse the endless Baltic Sea, only a few miles to the north.

And then he felt the sharp cold tang of blood on his upper lip. Schmidt had tasted blood before. He enjoyed it, even, but not when it was his own. He reached up to wipe the blood from his lip and felt his skin slide off with that little amount of pressure. The tingling pain from exposure to the cold air left him stunned for a second. Blood stained his lips and teeth.

He didn't feel the normal tightening of his healing factor begin to replace the lost flesh. He compulsively rubbed elsewhere on his face, only to feel the skin slide off with the same sickening tingle. He left the balcony to find his personal quarters in the castle. He felt the skin on his thighs peeling off in the same way as the skin on his face, worn loose by the friction of his black SS slacks.

He made his way to his quarters, angrily, desperately finding some sanctuary there. He took a swig of confiscated vodka, only to feel the burn of alcohol on his raw lips. He tilted his head back to pour it over himself, feeling the burn of each little rivulet across his failing flesh.

"Damn you, Dr. Koch! Damn you!" he screamed into silence. And as he stared into the grand antique mirror of his quarters, he saw only the Red Skull staring back.


	2. Chapter 2

"I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds."- The Bhagavid Ghita

Buenos Aires, Argentina 1955

A small business card, left by a man who sat at the bar for maybe ten seconds. The address for meeting with the informant written on it. An estate somewhere outside of town. The business card had the faint imprint of a symbol... a cube with an all-seeing eye on each of its visible faces. Rogers made sure to stow that image into his mind.

He finished his Roosevelt and left the bar, finding a taxi not far from the Palacio Duhau. He gave the taxista the general location, not the exact address, and he could tell the man was a little suspicious.

"You work for_ la junta_?", he asked in the peculiar mix of English and Spanish common to taxistas of the city. Rogers didn't say anything in response. The taxista tried to press with a few more questions, and then Rogers finally noticed, by the flash of scenery, that they weren't in the right direction.

The taxista began babbling something about Peron and the junta and some other nonsense, and Rogers just grinned. Punk didn't know who he was dealing with. He sat calmly in the back of the taxi until it pulled into some alleyway in the slums of Buenos Aires. A masked gunman opened the door, and began yelling for Rogers to get out of the car.

He kept his rifle trained on Rogers. Rogers stepped out of the door as told and smiled as the man tried to direct him where to walk. He just walked steadily towards the gunman, who fired at him. Gut shot. Rogers shrugged off the bullet. The sharp pain of a bullet entry didn't faze him anymore. He fired a couple more, but missed. Even in these close quarters. Amateur.

The man began yelling something in Spanish and trying to hastily step back. Rogers grabbed his rifle from his hands, breaking his wrists as he wrested it out of his grasp. And then he gave him a nice uppercut to the jaw. Probably killed him, but Rogers didn't stop to check.

The taxista hastily put his taxi into reverse, and Rogers grabbed the still open door. Didn't have enough leverage to stop the taxi in its movement, but he tore the door off just the same. The taxi sped off regardless.

And now he was stranded in the slums. He fumbled in his pockets for his SHIELD communicator, but it gave him only dead static, which was odd. Maybe there was more to this than met the eye...

From the SHIELD Knowledge Database

The Erskine Process: The method used to create Captain America. It differs from the methods of Doctors Koch (Red Skull) and Reinstein (Captain Britain) only through the application of the last part of the process: the enigmatic Vita-Rays.

The Vita-Rays were an innovation of Abraham Erskine's, developed independently of his work with Koch and Reinstein in censored. From what has been gleaned from Erskine's own records, the Vita-Rays bombarded the subject's bodies with exotic wavelengths of radiation, for the purpose of stabilizing the censored effects on their body. One can see the ultimate effect of the Vita-Rays by comparing the physical and mental perfection of Captain America to the dementia and deformities of the late Captain Britain and censored Red Skull.

Abraham Erskine ultimately destroyed his notes on Vita-Rays and destroyed the only working Vita-Ray emitter. He had not informed the military officials of censored of this third process in the censored. Analysis of Erskine's requisitions from the period reveals no possible blueprint for the Vita-Rays, suggesting that somehow he obtained the equipment off the books.

Erskine is currently a wanted criminal and traitor, having last been seen in censored. Holding both his own research on censored and the basic knowledge of censored in addition to many US military secrets, Erskine is currently considered an Alpha-level target by SHIELD.

January 1, 1940

The Eagle's Nest, Bavaria

Schmidt had spent a good deal of time in this section of the Alderhorst. The walls were covered in symbols of the Nazi occult, from the many headed Hydra to the more well-known swastika and eagle, as well as Doctor Koch's own favorite, the Cosmic Cube.

This was where Schmidt had undergone his Transformation from a Bavarian con-man and murderer to the ultimate embodiment of Nazi ideals. This was where he had quaked in the night, shivered feverishly, as his body purged away the impurities of mortals, and where he had finally awoken as the paragon of human evolution.

Some of the details of his life before his Transformation were hazy. Sometimes they would come to him in dreams, like flash of lightning. Bright, painful lightning, showing you all the stark beauty in the crags of the Alps.

As he slid his gloved hand across the symbols on the walls, he was struck by such a flash of lightning. He remembered Esther. That Jewish seductress! That cruel, hook-nosed bitch! He had enjoyed killing her... He had loved her.

He'd just left prison on another vagrancy charge. The only work he could find was under the Jews... the degrading little lords of Munich. A butcher. He couldn't remember his name, but he could remember the daughter.

Esther. Hanging on the meat hooks in that little butcher shop. Naked, like the little whore she was. Blood dripping down her slender neck, flowing around her little chin, only the perfect kashrut cut across her throat marring her beauty. And a look of fear in her dead eyes.

And then the Red Skull stared at him. All he could remember of her was the name and his hatred of her and her hanging on the meat hooks in Munich. He gave a smile under the black hood he now wore, his cracked and crooked lips adjusting uneasily to the rare gesture.

He stood there for minutes, maybe, contemplating that final image of his love on the meat-hooks. And then Doctor Koch saw the black hooded figure in the halls, and stepped out to greet him. He had been told he would be visiting the Eagle's Nest. He had heard of his... startling change.

"Johann... I've been expecting you. Do come in, my son."

Johann hesistantly pulled his hand back from the all-seeing eye it had come to rest on. And he brought his bloodshot eyes to meet with the man who had Transformed him.

"Yes, Herr Doktor." Johann followed him into his small office, a room with diagrams of the human body and photos of the dead pinned with frenzily-scribbled notes.

Doctor Koch was an unassuming figure. Sort of a handsome dark-haired Bavarian, but with his face caught somewhere between a sneer and a smile at all times. He looked always like he was about to deliver a statement of death... and like he would enjoy it.

Johann reached up to lift the closed hood from his face. Doctor Koch didn't look surprised. Johann's face looked as though it had been carved down to the muscle, and it had a sickening hardness to it, like fresh leather.

"One of the subjects in the trial, one of the ones who died, displayed a condition similar to this.", the Doctor said coolly. "His skin sloughed off with ease, as though the body itself were rejecting his skin. He died from blood loss and infection. You, meanwhile, survived a week of travel from Danzig to Bavaria, and your condition has stabilized. It seems as though your body has likewise, rejected your skin, but your healing factor prevents further infection or injury."

Johann's face couldn't show much emotion in its state. His gloved hands dug into the wood of the office's chair.

"We could try to do dermal grafts, Johann, but your healing factor would complicate surgery... and there is a chance the transplants couldn't remain in place anyways. Any new skin would likely fall off just as easily as the old."

Johann crinkled his hardened face. "So... I am to remain like this?" he said in the throaty rasp that was his standard.

The Doctor paused, in his best bedside manner. "Yes. I am sorry. I see no solution. The effects of the serum are unpredictable and..." Johann brought his fist slamming to the Doctor's desk, splintering the fine Bavarian oak and tossing his chair behind him. He strode quickly out of the room, replacing his hood as he did so.

He stood for hours, out on the cold exposed balcony of the Eagle's Nest. The thin air sent the normal visitor inside, short of breath, in not much time. But it had no effect on Johann, really. He had removed his hood to get the full view of the Alps and the cold air gave a calming tingle to his cracked flesh.

The Doctor finally came to join him on the balcony. "Have you thought about it Johann?" He turned his terrible visage to him, giving that look of mingled hatred and awe he gave to the many he admired. "I'm not Johann," he said, his lips in a crooked sneer. "I am the Red Skull."


	3. Chapter 3

"One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive."- Ecce Homo

Johann Schmidt understood fear. Oh yes, he understood fear. He had known fear, peeking out from behind worn cupboard doors when his father came home, hoping he wouldn't be found. He had known fear, as his mother lay dying and he stared across her bed at the gin-soaked bastard who stared back with eyes of dead intensity and imagined a life without her and with only him and tears came to him and his father gave him something to cry about it. He had known fear, as his head was pushed under the water and pulled back out, that scant moment to breathe and hear the blame rushing at him just like the water, before he was pushed under again, hearing the muffled angry cries through the hot scalding water of the wash basin.

And when he saw fear in the old man's eyes, as the vomit and bile awoke him to find Johann sitting on his chest, little hands wrapped around his neck, vomit filling his lungs as he was forced to try and breathe... As his rants came out throaty and muffled like Johann's head was in the water before all was silent... then he had understood fear.

And he'd made sure others came to understand fear. No... that isn't quite right. He made sure they knew it. Once they started to understand the fear, it wasn't fear anymore. The "examples" at the orphanage, that was when he had first found his talent for inspiring it in others. A boy who inquired if his mother was a whore, a common matter at such institutions, and found himself half-drowned as Johann had once been at the hands of his father. Or the boy whose fingers he broke into splinters, and who hid his crippled hand from the teachers for fear of Johann's reprisal. Couldn't quite remember why he'd done that one.

Or kind, kind Esther, who had seen her love for Johann slowly turned into fear; fear at his approaching step, fearing for his arrival in the night, fear of what would happen if she did not satisfy him. She had ended up on the meat-hooks when she had let go of her fear.

There were others, of course. A gambler in Berlin who found his every drunken step followed until he finally met his end. A socialist who found his wife's hand at the party office one day. An SA man who found all of his possessions piled in the middle of his apartment, heard the door close behind him, and felt Johann's hand on his shoulder.

His Transformation had been a new tool of fear. His super-human strength and endurance frightened everyone who knew of it. And his idolization at the hands of Hitler... it made even the most boastful Schutzstaffel fall silent when Schmidt walked by.

And his Second Transformation, into the form of the Red Skull, was an enhancement of his ability to cause fear in others. Even Hitler's cold steel gaze showed fear at the sight of Red Skull, if only fleetingly and in the corner of those impenetrable eyes. Any man who could look at the Red Skull and see anything but a monster... well, they were monsters themselves.

He started displaying his face openly after his visit to the Alderhorst. No reason to hide it under a black SS hood. Wehrmacht soldiers and SS alike tried to avert their eyes from his face. His... distinctive image even made it into the language of the partisans. He was a demon to them, brought from the depths of Hell by the Germans.

He made a game of it with the partisans in Poland. He would go out into the country, on "hunting trips" as the soldiers often called it. And when he had whetted his thirst on Polish and Jewish partisans, he would return and go to hear stories about himself from prisoners and villagers, the like. The Catholics viewed him as some sort of personification of the End Times, the Jews saw him as some punishment from God. He was flattered.

When Operation Barbarossa began, he was, of course, taken away from the pacification of Poland. He found the Soviets to be an altogether different sort of beast from the Poles. The sort of warfare seen in Russia... it wasn't as conducive to fear as the "hunting trips" of Poland. The long, protracted assaults in urban areas, the freezing open plains; the Red Skull wished for the dark forests of Poland. And he found himself doing a lot more skulking around. The Poles had been using small guns and, at best, some light artillery. But in Russia, he saw tanks and heavy artillery. He wasn't sure what would happen if he got hit by direct tank fire. He didn't want to find out. The worst live fire test they'd ever done on him was an anti-tank rifle, and that certainly hadn't been pleasant. His healing factor had taken a second to pull his insides together, and the bullet left everything inside of him feeling... shifted. And the people? Say what you liked about Josef Stalin, but he too understood fear. Perhaps even better than Hitler.

He snuck up on a Russian sniper in Kiev, a girl perhaps no older than fifteen. He smiled when he broke her arms and turned her over. He enjoyed the fear of women more than he enjoyed the fear of men. But as he tore the little Russian girl apart with his bare hands, she returned only a look that said "Oh, so this is how I'm going to die." Completely unsatisfying.

Following the stall of the drive towards Moscow, Hitler sent for the Red Skull. Somehow having avoided the tar of defeat, Hitler gave him a new mission- the rooting out of the Knight-Captain of France, the enigmatic super-soldier who had arrived in France around the time the Moscow offensive stalled and the destruction of the French Resistance through any means necessary. The Red Skull could enjoy such a mission very, very much...

Paris, France 1942

"Do you know what they say in the Resistance, Stulpnagel?" The Red Skull was not fond of Stulpnagel. He was weak and fearful- not the sort of person who should have had the occupation of a country on his shoulders. Not the type of person who should have worn the German uniform. Stulpnagel's lip quivered and he kept his eyes away from the Red Skull's face. Pitiful.

"They say that we have conquered France- but that we will never conquer the Eiffel Tower. What do you think of that, Stulpnagel?" The Red Skull gave the pitiful man a smile and stared closely at him.

"I... I think there is some strength in a symbol and... and... we shouldn't unnecessarily antagonize the Fr..." The Red Skull threw his head back in laughter.

"Unnecessarily antagonize them, Stulpnagel? They are the conquered- there should be no consideration of them. But I agree with you that there is strength in a symbol. Symbols like the Eiffel Tower... symbols like the Knight-Captain."

"And I think if we can't destroy the one... we should destroy the other." The look of horror on Stulpnagel's face was amusing.

"But..."

"There is to be no question of it, Stulpnagel. Arrange for the demolition of the Eiffel Tower. Evacuate our men from its shadow an hour before it falls. We'll explain it afterwards- let all the different bands of Frenchmen wonder who brought on this punishment. Then we'll put forth our demand for the Knight-Captain."

"And then we'll make Paris burn, Stulpnagel." The look on the man's face was that of wavering resolve. He had fought with the SS over everything- from the Jewish Conspiracy to retaliation over the murder of generals. The Red Skull leaned in close and whispered "... or would you like to burn with it?"

The Red Skull enjoyed watching the Eiffel Tower fall. The sound of snapping steel and cables, the peculiar pop of the metal in the explosion, the sound in the air as the structure fell to the Earth, the delightful shake as the symbol of France brought darkness to La Ville-Lumiere. He relished more the look on Stulpnagel's face. If Hitler could see the weakness if that pudgy little man's eyes... But no matter. The Red Skull was above politics and feuds, just like der Fuhrer. His word was enough to make men follow. Fearful little men like Stulpnagel.

"Let the dust settle, Stulpnagel. Then I want you to pull our man in the Milice- the Hopper, and bring him to me." The Red Skull did not think, as Stulpnagel did, that the fall of the Eiffel Tower would hurt more than just the hearts of the Macquis. Or he just didn't care, wishing only to see it burn. Not that it mattered- the Hopper was all mercenary, with little love in his heart for travaille, famille or patrie...


End file.
